AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT THE 



INAUGURATION OF THE UNION CLUB, 



J) APRIL, 1863. 






!y EDWARD EVERETT. 



E 



BOSTON: 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

1863. 




Class. 
Book. 



h 



'3 




AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT THE 



INAUGURATION OP THE UNION CLUB, 



9 APRIL, 1863, 



By EDWARD EVERETT. 



BOSTON: 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

1863. 




.3 



Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1863, by 

Little, Rrown and Company, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
STEREOTYPED- AND PRINTED BY H. 0. HOUGHTON. 



ADDRESS. 



Gentlemen of the Union Club : — 

As this is the first meeting of our Association, 
since by your kindness I had the honor to be 
chosen its President, I avail myself of the oppor- 
tunity, to return you my thanks for this mark of 
your confidence. I am not greatly versed in 
" Club Law " of any kind, and I have reason to 
fear that I shall not be able to render you much 
active service ; but it has afforded me pleasure, 
indeed, I have felt it to be my duty, by uniting 
with you in this Association, to express my warm 
approbation of the principle on which it is founded. 
That principle is the active and earnest coopera- 
tion of. all good citizens in the loyal support of the 
Union, the Constitution, and the Government of 
the country in the present great crisis of ai fairs, 
and the encouragement of each other and of the 
community at large in the vigorous prosecution of 
the war, till the rebellion is suppressed and the 
integrity of the Nation is restored. We propose 
no party action ; we aim at no party ends ; and we 
invite the fellowship of all good and true men, of 
whatever political connection, who concur with us 
in this one great paramount view of Public Duty. 



4 ADDRESS BEFORE 

The struggle, in which the government and 
loyal people of the country have been now for 
nearly two years engaged, is one, I need scarce 
say, of almost unexampled magnitude, attended 
with all the difficulties, the sacrifices, the alterna- 
tion of success and failure, which are incident to 
a contest of such stupendous dimensions. Scarce 
ever have there been arrayed against each other, on 
a field of action so vast, forces so numerous, at an 
expense so great, with such profusion of material 
supplies and financial resources, and, what is infi- 
nitely more important, with interests so momen- 
tous at stake. The scene of the conflict, coexten- 
sive as it is with the settlements of the United 
States this side of the Rocky Mountains, is but 
little inferior in extent to Europe. The military 
forces in array and amply supplied with the mate- 
riel of war are as great as were ever placed in the 
field in the war of the French Revolution. The 
sea-coast held in rigid blockade by our Navy is 
more extensive than that actually blockaded by the 
Navy of Great Britain, during that war. Our 
armies and navy, owing to the character of our 
soldiers and seamen and the higher standard of 
comfort in this country, are sustained at greater 
expense than those of any other service ; and the 
objects of the war are nothing less than to prevent 
a great and prosperous Union of States, under one 
constitutional government, from being broken up 
into wretched fragments ; to protect the organic 



THE UNION CLUB. Q 

life of a mighty People, in the morning of their 
national existence, from the murderous and suicidal 
blow aimed at it ; to rescue the work of our revo- 
lutionary and constitutional fathers, the greatest 
political work of human wisdom, from ignominious 
ruin ; and to hand down this peerless inheritance 
of public and private blessings unimpaired to our 
posterity. 

Compared with these objects, how insignificant 
the scene, the operations, the objects of the recent 
wars in Europe, and how unimportant their results ! 
The late Italian war had for its object, nominally, 
to drive the foreigner beyond the Alps and to give 
Italy to the Italians, while its real object was to 
restore the military and political influence of France 
in Europe, and, at least as far as Italy is concerned, 
annul the treaties of Vienna. But all Italy is not 
equal in extent to New York, Pennsylvania, and 
Ohio ; the Austrians still hold Venice and the best 
half of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom ; France 
is still intrenched at Rome, the very heart of the 
Peninsula ; and the exiled dynasties are awaiting 
the next turn of the wheel of political fortune, for 
those revolutions in empire which shall restore 
them to their former capitals. I feel all possible 
sympathy with the cause of Italian nationality. As 
an ardent friend to that beautiful country, to which 
the civilized world is under obligations never to be 
too gratefully repaid, I accept with thankfulness 
every word or deed from whatever quarter, which 



6 ADDRESS BEFORE 

can contribute to replace her in the first rank of 
the nations ; it may come from Sardinia, or it may 
come from France ; but much I fear that the deadly 
spirit of discord, which on the downfall of the Ro- 
man Empire took possession of the Peninsula and 
parcelled it out into a dozen warring States, — the 
same unhallowed end which the same evil spirit is 
aiming to compass in our noble Union,/ — has 
poisoned the life of Italian nationality beyond the 
possibility of recovery. 

The next preceding war had its ostensible origin 
in the struggles of the Greek and Latin churches 
for ascendency in the East ; its real object was to 
check the progress of Russia in that quarter ; and 
it arrayed a half a million of men for the destruc- 
tion or defence of one fortress in the Crimea. 
The Ate of that contest " came hot from hell and 
let slip the dogs of war," to settle the question 
whether the French or Russian vice-consul should 
keep the key of the church, built upon the spot 
where the Prince of Peace was born. The war 
was fought ; a hundred thousand families were clad 
in mourning ; Russia still holds the Crimea ; Se- 
bastopol has risen from its ruins ; and which vice- 
consul keeps the key of the church of Bethlehem, 
few persons in Christendom, outside the three cab- 
inets, know or care. 

And then the great war of the French Revolu- 
tion, which began with the invasion of France by 
the Prussians in 1792, and ended with the exile 



THE UNION CLUB. n 

of Napoleon to St. Helena in 1815; which more 
than any contest in modern times resembles, in the 
vastness of its theatre and the magnitude of the 
forces in array, the contest in which we are now 
involved, how insignificant its issues compared with 
those here at stake ! The allies under the lead of 
England waged the war to check the progress of 
the French Revolution and eventually to restore the 
Bourbons. The Bourbons are still in exile ; the 
French Revolution is enthroned at the Tuileries, 
and many of its political maxims have passed into 
the public law of Europe. The French, on their 
side, strove to overturn the remains of feudalism in 
Europe, to destroy the political influence and the 
maritime ascendency of England, and to subordi- 
nate the Continental governments to France. Fierce 
battles with various fortunes were fought, millions 
of lives sacrificed, a great deal of old parchment 
was torn up, a great deal of new parchment writ- 
ten over, and, at the end of twenty-one years, 
England came out of the contest stronger than 
ever ; the equilibrium of Europe is substantially 
unchanged ; the relations of the Continental pow- 
ers to France not materially affected, and the great 
leaders of the Titanic struggle, France and Eng- 
land, united, seemingly at least, in a most beautiful 
entente cordiale. A few territorial and dynastic 
changes of no vital importance to the sum total 
have been made in Central Europe ; the Holy Ro- 
man Empire, long before effete, has been broken 



8 ADDRESS BEFORE 

up ; a few German electors and archdukes are 
styled kings ; Holland and Belgium have been 
raised to independent monarchies ; Genoa has 
become a Sardinian city, and Venice has become 
an Austrian city ; the nephew of Napoleon and the 
niece of George IV. exchange friendly visits in 
their respective capitals ; and the territorial and 
political map of Europe is substantially what it was 
when the States general of France met at Ver- 
sailles in 1789/ 

In that year the Federal Constitution went into 
operation in the United States ; the great political 
consummation of the design of Providence in the 
discovery and settlement of America ; the happy 
framework of some of the wisest and best men 
that ever lived, intended to effect the extension of 
civilization in the shortest possible time over a 
vast continent lying in, a state of nature ; to pro- 
vide a city of refuge for the starving millions of 
Europe ; to prepare the way for the civilization 
and Christianization of Africa by the return of a 
portion of her children from the house of bondage ; 
and to combine upon a scale of unprecedented 
magnitude, the home-bred and fireside blessings 
of small States and local administrations with the 
security, influence, and power of a great empire. 
For seventy years it has been working out these 
great results ; it has conferred upon the rapidly 
increasing population of the country a degree of 
general prosperity never equalled ; it has welcomed 



THE UNION CLUB. 



9 



the surplus and suffering multitudes of Europe to 
the enjoyment of a state of well-being unknown to 
them at home ; and not without the imperfections 
and the errors, the woes and I am sorry to add the 
wrongs, which attend all human things, the inci- 
dents neither of republics nor of monarchies, but 
of our common frail humanity, it has conferred 
upon more than two generations an amount of 
good, with an exemption from the sacrifices and 
trials which have afflicted other States, altogether 
without a parallel in history. 

And now the great question which we have to 
settle is, Shall this mighty aggregate of prosperity 
perish, or shall it endure ? Shall this imperial heri- 
tage of blessings descend unimpaired to our posteri- 
ty, or shall it be ignominiously, profligately thrown 
away? Shall the territory of the Union, late so happy 
under the control and adjustment of the National 
and State governments, be broken up into miserable 
fragments, sure to be engaged in constantly recur- 
ring border wars, and all lying at the mercy of 
foreign powers, or shall it preserve its noble integ- 
rity under the aegis of the National government] 
Admit the right of the seceding States to break up 
the Union at pleasure, nay of each and every State 
to do so, and allow them to enforce that right by a 
successful war ; . deny the authority of the Central 
government to control its members; and how long 
will it be, before the new Confederacies created 
by the first disruption will be resolved into still 



10 ADDRESS BEFORE 

smaller fragments, and the continent will become a 
vast theatre of civil war, military license, anarchy, 
and eventually despotism ? Better at whatever cost, 
by whatever sacrifice, settle the question at once, 
and settle it forever. 

For remember, my friends, that, in this deso- 
lating war, the government and loyal people of the 
country are the party assailed, and that they are 
clad in the triple armor of a just cause. The 
pretence is set up by the rebels, that they are 
contending for the right of self-government, and 
the unfriendly press of Europe talks of its being a 
war of revenge and subjugation. Consider what 
makes a just war even in the opinion of those who 
condemn the North. England, a little more than a 
twelvemonth ago, thought it a just cause of war, that 
a merchant packet was brought to at sea by a bellig- 
erent cruiser, in the exercise of the undoubted right 
of search, and that four persons were taken from 
it, as she considered, without warrant in the law of 
nations, though she in the last general war had 
taken more than four thousand persons from our neu- 
tral vessels, confessedly without warrant in the law 
of nations. The federal government, in the paralysis 
of its powers caused by the interregnum between 
the old and new administrations, submitted with 
patience to the affront of having two ships, laden 
with supplies for a fort belonging to the United 
States, fired upon in profound peace, by a pretended 
government unacknowledged at that time, even as 



THE UNION CLUB. \\ 

a belligerent, by any foreign power. It was not till 
the third act of open organized war, as mean as it 
was murderous, — the assault on Fort Sumter from 
eleven batteries manned by eight or ten thousand 
men, — a fortress belonging to the United States, 
built by the general government, upon a spot ceded 
by the State of South Carolina to the United States, 
and then occupied by one company of seventy men, 
provisioned but for forty-eight hours ; not till the 
threat had gone forth, on the same day, from the 
capital of the pretended Confederacy, that in three 
weeks their flag should float over the dome of the 
Capitol at Washington, and in due time over 
Faneuil Hall; not till their emissaries in London 
had claimed that Mr. Adams, the Envoy of the 
United States, ought not to be received on his arri- 
val, because, before that event, the Confederacy 
would be installed at Washington, and the United 
States would have ceased to exist ; — it was not till 
all this had taken place, that the general govern- 
ment drew the sword. 

Even supposing Carolina had a constitutional 
right to secede and to declare herself a foreign State, 
the war is not the less a war of aggression on her 
part and that of her associates. She had no right 
in seceding to carry Sumter along with her. She 
had formally ceded that spot to the United States. 
It was ours by a firmer tenure than that by which 
Gibraltar belongs to England, for that was origi- 
nally obtained by conquest. Spain notoriously re- 



12 ADDRESS BEFORE 

gards the possession of Gibraltar by England as a 
standing monument of national humiliation ; so 
much so that, in the Peninsular War, although the 
armies of England were the only hope of the preser- 
vation of the independence of Spain, the thought 
of Gibraltar led her to oppose the occupation of 
Cadiz by British troops, even under the strongest 
strategetical motives. Suppose, now, Spain, desir- 
ous of repossessing Gibraltar, had sent agents to 
London to treat for its purchase, and that these 
agents had failed of success ; would this give Spain 
a right to drive the English by force out of Gibral- 
tar ] And how long would England slumber over 
an attack like that of Carolina on Fort Sumter? 
Would not every English ship of war that could 
float be put in commission, and every regiment in 
the British army, available for the purpose, be 
moved to the coast, rather than leave Gibraltar in 
the hands of the Spaniards ? Undoubtedly Eng- 
land would spend every pound sterling in her 
treasury, she would send her last man to the 
Peninsula, rather than allow such an outrage to 
succeed ; and it would be an insult to the common 
sense of mankind, to call that a war of aggression 
on the part of Great Britain. 

But again, suppose the Southern States had a 
right to secede, (which they have as much and no 
other right to do than the counties south of the 
Thames and the Severn have to secede from the 
English crown and set up the old kingdom of 



THE UNION CLUB. 13 

Sussex,) is this metaphysical right, doubted even by 
the ablest of their own leaders,* a right to be main- 
tained at the mouth of the cannon by seven States, 
if not instantly conceded by all the rest of the 
Union ] Had the majority of the citizens of the 
cotton-growing States desired to leave the Union, 
which was notoriously not the case ; had they — 
instead of "being precipitated into the revolution" 
by ambitious demagogues, whose language I quote 
— by deliberate legislative acts or conventions of 
the people, called after mature public discussion of 
the question, authentically announced that feet and 
their willingness to leave to the United States the 
fortresses necessary to protect the navigation of the 
Gulf of Mexico and the control of the Mississippi 
River, I have little doubt, that a requisite majority 
of the States would have agreed to the amendment 
of the Constitution necessary to carry such an ar- 
rangement into effect; — sure as it was in a few- 
years by its perfect madness to cure itself. But 
this did not suit the ambitious leaders in the cotton- 

*That Mr. Calhoun did not claim Secession as a constitutional 
right, is conclusively shown by Hon. Reverdy Johnson in a letter 
dated 24th June, 1861, and published in the appendix to an oration 
delivered at New York on the 4th of July following, by the author 
of this address. Mr. Iverson of Georgia expressed himself as fol- 
lows in the Senate of the United States, on the 5th December, 
1860: "I do not myself place the right of a State to secede 
from the Union upon constitutional grounds. I admit that the 
Constitution has not granted that power to a State. It is exceed- 
ingly doubtful even, whether the right has been reserved. Cer- 
tainly it has not been reserved in express terms." 



14, ADDRESS BEFORE 

growing States. They well knew that no such 
expression of popular opinion could be obtained, for 
the good reason that no such opinion existed. They 
knew that a separation thus peaceably brought 
about would be an experiment as short-lived as 
suicidal. They knew that the Border States would 
stand aloof, and that the first revolution in domestic 
politics, probably the next Presidential election, 
would consign to political ruin the authors of the 
movement and bring back the seceding States to 
the Union. This they knew, this they felt, this 
they in effect confessed. They did not wish to be 
allowed to " go in peace." All professions to that 
effect are delusive and hypocritical. It was for the 
wicked purpose of " firing the Southern heart " by 
the shedding of blood, thus exciting the Border 
States to take part with the Cotton States, and 
what was of equal importance overawing and 
silencing opposition at home, that Fort Sumter was 
attacked. If ever the secrets of this conspiracy 
are disclosed by the publication of the correspond- 
ence that passed between Richmond, Charleston, 
and Montgomery in that inauspicious winter of 
1860-61, what I now affirm will be found in black 
and white. In truth, it was substantially avowed 
in the columns of the Charleston journals and in 
the speeches of the demagogues who were sent 
from Virginia to fan the flame of treason. 

The blow at length was struck and but too suc- 
cessfully. With the outbreak of the Rebellion a 



THE UNION CLUB. \$ 

reign of terror as merciless as that of Robespierre 
was inaugurated at the South, and every man of 
eminence but the noble and lamented Petigru 
quailed before it. Virginia, ensnared in the mesh- 
es of her hair-splitting metaphysics, and fearful of 
being deprived of the wretched privilege of supply- 
ing the plantations of Mississippi and Louisiana 
with the surplus of her slave population, in known 
opposition to the wish of the majority of her people, 
was engineered into the contest; and a war not 
merely of aggression, but of cold-blooded calculation 
on the part of the South, and of self-defence, of 
duty, and of necessity, on the part of the North, 
was inaugurated. 

With every month of its prosecution this aggres- 
sive character of the war has been more and more 
displayed. On the 12th of April, 1861, while the 
news of the bombardment of Sumter was passing 
over the wires to Montgomery, and before its little 
band of heroes had been compelled to yield to the 
overwhelming force by which they were surrounded, 
the intention of capturing Washington was, as we 
have seen, publicly announced by the Confederate 
Secretary of War. Washington is the capital of 
thirty-four States ; at the time this insolent threat 
was uttered, the Confederacy was confined to the 
seven cotton-growing States. What right could 
this rebellious group of States, far off' on the Gulf 
of Mexico, with a sum total of a little more than 
two and one half millions of white inhabitants, have 



16 ADDRESS BEFORE 

to the metropolis of the Union ] Seven days later 
the pavement of Baltimore was stained with the 
blood of Massachusetts men, hastening in obedience 
to lawful authority to the defence of the capital. 
Events have shown the unshaken loyalty of Mary- 
land. Not a voice was raised in all her bor- 
ders, in response to the proclamation of the Con- 
federate General, who crossed the Potomac last 
September with an army of ninety-seven thou- 
sand men, " to liberate oppressed Maryland." 
Western Virginia was next attacked. Mr. Sen- 
ator Mason, in a published letter, signed by 
his name, had told the citizens of that part 
of the State, (who had no more intention than 
the western counties of Massachusetts to secede 
from the Union,) that if they presumed even to 
vote against the ordinance, they must leave the 
State, — such being that gentleman's understanding 
of the principle that government must rest on the 
consent of the governed. In further illustration of 
the principle, Western Virginia was overrun by the 
Confederate troops till they were driven out by 
Rosecrans and McClellan. Kentucky and Mis- 
souri were next invaded. There, too, the progress 
of events has disclosed, on the part of the masses of 
the people, an unshaken loyalty to the Union ; but 
they have been overrun, plundered, and devastated 
by the armies of this pacific confederacy, which 
asks for nothing but " to be let alone and allowed 
to go in peace." Though the first act of the Seces- 



THE UNION CLUB. yj 

sionists in Baltimore, after the murderous attack on 
the Massachusetts troops, was to tear up and burn 
the bridges on the railroads leading to the North 
and West, Mr. Benjamin (the humane Secretary of 
State to the Confederacy) ordered the Union men, 
charged with bridge-burning in East Tennessee, to 
be tried by " a drum-head court-martial," if con- 
victed, to be hung, and their bodies to be left on the 
gibbet near the bridges destroyed ; — the mass of the 
people in East Tennessee being all the time as loyal 
to the Union as in Western Virginia.* The same 
is the case, to a considerable extent, in Western 
North Carolina, in Northern Alabama, in Arkan- 
sas, in Louisiana, and in Texas ; but confiscation, 
impressment into the army, the blood-hound, the 
scourge, and the halter, are the machinery by which 
this pacific confederacy produces its vaunted una- 
nimity. You may recollect that General Houston, 
the Governor of Texas, refused to call the Legisla- 
ture of that State together, to act on the question 
of Secession. With reference to this refusal, Mr. 
Iverson of Georgia, on the third day of the session 
of 1860-61, openly declared in the Senate of the 
United States, that " if he did not yield to public 
sentiment, some Texan Brutus will arise to rid his 
country of the hoary-headed incubus that stands 
between the people and their sovereign will." 

An attempt I know is made, especially by foreign 

* How cruelly these orders continue to be enforced sufficiently 
appears from the recent report of the Judge- Advocate-General. 
2 



18 ADDRESS BEFORE 

writers, to assimilate the existing Rebellion at the 
South with the American Revolution. We might, 
as against England, accept this view of the subject ; 
for she not only denied the right of the Colonies to 
assert their independence, but treated the attempt 
to do so as a rebellion. Although she denies our 
right by a legislative act to close the ports of the 
rebellious States, she did it herself in the Revolu- 
tionary War by 16 George III., c. 5, and two 
years after the capitulation of Burgoyne and after 
the independence of the States had been acknowl- 
edged by France, she sent Mr. Laurens to the 
Tower as a traitor. She therefore is, to say the 
least, as much estopped from recognizing the right 
of secession as we from denying it. 

But the truth is there is not the slightest simi- 
larity between the secession of the rebel States and 
the American Revolution, unless upon the principle 
that all rebellions are just. Our fathers in 1776 
set up no unqualified right of revolution, and it 
would have come to nothing practically, if they had ; 
for, in any sense in which there is an abstract right, 
on the part of the people, to revolt, there is a co- 
extensive right, on the part of the government, to 
suppress the revolution. They claimed no right 
for a part of a people to throw off at pleasure the 
authority of a legitimate or constitutional govern- 
ment, for this would be to strike at the root of all 
government. What they taught was, that " gov- 
ernments are instituted to secure the inalienable 



THE UNION CLUB. 



19 



rights of men, among which are life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness ; and inasmuch as govern- 
ments derive their just power from the consent of 
the governed, whenever any form of government 
becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of 
the people to alter or abolish it and institute 
another." This is the whole of their doctrine on 
that subject, and it is of course equally true in 
monarchies and republics, in centralized and con- 
federate governments. 

The Declaration of Independence further held, 
that the inhabitants of the Colonies were " one 
people," namely, the American people, and that they 
were connected with " another " people, namely, the 
English, by a common allegiance to the British 
Crown, which was bound to govern them through 
their own assemblies. Not being represented in 
the British Parliament, they denied its right to bind 
them in all cases, and, inasmuch as the king, com- 
bining with the parliament, had by a long course of 
abuses and usurpations, evinced a desire to reduce 
them to absolute despotism, it was their right and 
duty to throw off their allegiance, and establish 
their independence. 

In all this, I need not say, there is not the slight- 
est similarity, in principle or fact, with the case of the 
seceding States. Their inhabitants are not a sepa- 
rate colonial people, but they are an integral portion 
of that " one people " which declared their inde- 
pendence, and which, being loosely associated under 



20 ADDRESS BEFORE 

the old confederation of States, ordained and estab- 
lished the present Constitution, " in order to form 
a more perfect Union." In the government which 
they thus took a part in forming, instead of being 
unrepresented as our fathers were in Parliament, 
they are represented beyond the numerical propor- 
tion of their free population, and for the greater 
part of the time its administration has been con- 
trolled by themselves. This organic law thus 
formed has been adopted by the people of each of 
the States, as -much as their own State constitu- 
tions ; and there is a provision in the text of the 
instrument, that " this Constitution, and the laws of 
the United States which shall be made in pursuance 
thereof, .... shall be the supreme law of the land, 
and the judges in every State shall be bound there- 
by, anything in the Constitution or laws of any 
State to the contrary notwithstanding." All the 
powers of the government having for the greater 
part of the time since its formation been controlled 
by the people of the seceding States and by those 
in the other States in political alliance with them, it 
is impossible, notwithstanding loose assertions and 
clamors to the contrary, that the seceding States 
can have found it an oppressive or tyrannical gov- 
ernment, which, by the principles of the Declaration 
and by the law of Nature, they had a right to 
throw off, or even of which they had any just right 
to complain. They have, accordingly, so far from 
wishing to alter or abolish it, readopted this form 



THE UNION CLUB. £\ 

of government with no essential alterations, and it 
was admitted by Mr. Vice-President Stephens 
(with the exception of Mr. Jefferson Davis the 
ablest man in the Confederate service) to be the 
mildest and most beneficent government known 
in the history of the world. This confession was 
made after the election of Mr. Lincoln, the imme- 
diate pretended justification of the Rebellion. A 
still more important admission was made, also after 
that event, by Mr. Davis himself, in one of his last 
speeches in the Senate of the United States, (10th 
December, I860,) a body in which he has never re- 
signed his membership, and of which the oath now 
rests upon his conscience. 

" Our fathers," said Mr. Davis, " learning wis- 
dom from the experiments of Rome and Greece, 
the one a consolidated Republic, and the other 
strictly a Confederacy, and taught by the lessons 
of our own experiment under the Confederation, 
came together to form 'a more perfect Union,' 
and in my judgment made the best government 
that has ever been instituted by man. It only 
requires that it should be carried out in the spirit 
in which it was made, that the circumstances un- 
der which it was made should continue, and no 
evil can arise under the government, for which it 
has not an appropriate remedy* Then it is out- 
side of the government, elsewhere than to its Con- 
stitution or to its administration, that we must 
look. Men must not creep in the dust of parti- 



Q2 ADDRESS BEFORE 

san strife and seek to make points against oppo- 
nents, as the means of evading or meeting the 
issues before us. The fault is not in the form 
of the government, nor does the evil spring from 
the manner in which it has been administered. 
Where, then, is it? It is that our fathers formed 
a government for a union of friendly States ; and 
though under it the people have been prosperous 
beyond comparison with any other whose career 
is recorded in the history of man, still that union 
of friendly States had changed its character, and 
sectional hostility has been substituted for the fra- 
ternity in which the government was founded. " 

In an Italian church-yard there is a monument 
with an epitaph on a man who, being well, dosed 
himself to death with unwholesome drugs. Stavb 
bene^ ma, per star meglio, sto qui. " I was well ; 
I wanted to be better : and here I am." Mr. 
Davis was living about two years ago, as he tells 
us, under the best form of government ever insti- 
tuted by man ; no mean blessing that to begin 
with, as the world goes. There was no fault to 
be found with the manner in which it had been 
administered. Of how few governments can that 
be said, in ancient or modern times. It would 
indeed have been ungracious in Mr. Davis to 
complain of its administration, for it had almost 
always been controlled by his friends, and he him- 
self had been liberally educated at its expense, had 
passed most of his life in its service, and was then 



THE UNION CLUB. QQ 

filling one of its highest trusts. Under the prac- 
tical working of this perfectly constituted and ac- 
ceptably administered government, the country he 
admits has been prosperous beyond comparison 
with anything recorded in history. Was not this 
enough for man or people ? Alas, no ! Mr. Davis 
was not content with this exuberant felicity. He 
needed something more; he desired a "nice and 
subtle happiness ; " he sighed for " Fraternity." 
To get that precious boon, he dosed himself with 
the maddening drug of Secession ; and now be- 
hold him ; — the fetlocks of his war-horse wet with 
the blood of civil war, oozing from the trampled 
bosoms of friend and of foe, as he rages over the 
field of death, in search of something better than 
the best of governments, better than an unexcep- 
tionable administration, better than a prosperity 
without example in the history of the world ! 

Is this patriotic statesmanship, or is it ambi- 
tious frenzy] What! a wanton rebellion like this 
to be compared with the righteous work of our 
sainted Fathers, of Washington and Franklin, and 
Jefferson and Adams, the heroes and sages of the 
Revolution ! This gigantic treason to be profanely 
lauded as the august foundation of a new State ; 
to be fed with foreign gold and nursed with for- 
eign favor ! Then let all pretence of distinction 
between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, be 
abandoned. Lift up your heads, ye prison-gates, 
and allow your wronged inmates to go free ! Come 



24 ADDRESS BEFORE 

home from the cannibal islands, ye missionaries, 
and let the honest savage gorge upon his ci strange 
flesh!" Throw open your doors, O just Bedlam, 
and send your abused philosophers, princes, and 
statesmen to their homes ! Cease your dull prate, 
ye teachers of morals! Burn your Bibles, minis- 
ters of the gospel ! There is no crime, there is 
no barbarism, there is no madness. Those who 
make constitutions, riot those who break them, 
shall henceforward be the traitors. Our legisla- 
tors and judges shall be the culprits, not felons 
and thieves. Oaths shall no longer be the link 
that binds the soul of the creature to the footstool 
of the Creator, but a base trap baited by knaves 
to catch the easy consciences of fools ; and all this 
vaunted civilization, founded on institutions, hal- 
lowed by religion, buttressed by tribunals, matured 
by time, accepted by the common sense of mankind, 
shall be proclaimed, in the face of the Universe, a 
paltry sham and a wicked lie ! 

Most true, it certainly is, that for the last thirty 
years much ill-feeling has sprung up between the 
North and the South. No one can regret this 
more than I have done, and nothing within the 
province of a private individual has been neglected 
by me, to prevent its growth and avert its conse- 
quences. But this ill-feeling has sprung up quite 
as much by the fault of the South as of the North, 
and the language of reproach and irritation, in 
which it has found utterance, has been heard quite 



THE UNION CLUB. Q5 

as often and quite as loudly in one section of the 
country as the other. But after all, there has never 
been, on the part of the masses of the people, North 
or South, that degree of sectional hostility which 
Mr. Davis assumes, in order to justify his attempt 
to overturn the government; there has been noth- 
ing, he admits, which has prevented a satisfactory 
and prosperous administration of the government; 
nothing even, he might have added, which has inter- 
fered with amicable social intercourse, North and 
South; nothing which prevented Mr. Davis him- 
self, prior to the last Presidential election, and when 
he himself was an aspirant to the Presidency, from 
passing a summer in this greatly reviled and hated 
New r England, much apparently to the mutual satis- 
faction of himself and friends, everywhere received 
with cordial hospitality, and repaying, with glowing 
phrases of compliment, the ovations which every- 
where attended his progress. In one year after- 
wards, in less than three months after pronouncing 
the eulogium just cited on the Constitution of the 
United States, and without having resigned his seat 
as a senator, we find him at the head of a revolution 
organized to overturn it, and shedding the best 
blood of the country, North and South, to compass 
this cruel, this nefarious end. Perhaps if he had 
succeeded in his canvass for the Presidency, he 
might have been willing, if administered by him- 
self, that the people should live four years longer 
under " the best government ever instituted by 



26 ADDRESS BEFORE 

man." If he had himself reached the White House, 
he might have consented that his fellow-citizens 
should continue four years longer to prosper be- 
yond comparison with any other people in history. 
Well did Mr. Vice-President Stephens observe, on 
the 14th of November, 1860, that "the disappoint- 
ment of ambitious aspirants to office had had much 
to do with bringing on the deplorable state of af- 
fairs." 

Such is Ms declaration, and if this assertion of 
the second officer in the Confederacy is well 
founded; if this tremendous war has indeed in 
no small degree been brought upon us for the 
reason stated by him ; if the country has been 
called to stagger beneath this daily increasing 
mountain load of debt ; if our lawful commerce 
has been surrendered to the rovers of the sea, 
fitted out with shameless cupidity to prey upon 
it ; if the influence of our country, which so lately 
held high its head in the front rank of the family 
of nations, has for the time being been annihilated, 
and foreign powers are already treating us with 
coldness and indifference, watching and waiting 
to see the noble ship of state go to pieces on 
the breakers ; if the bones of hundreds and 
thousands of our brethren are bleaching on the 
battle-field ; if other hundreds and other thousands 
are languishing with cruel wounds and the diseases 
of the camp, mutilated, broken down, prematurely 
old, creeping from the wards of the hospital to 



THE UNION CLUB. #7 

their last bed in the churchyard ; if the flower 
of our young men North and South has been 
cut down ; if the bereaved and desolate parent, 
the heart-broken widow, the mourning sister, the 
orphan child, have been called to swell this 
frightful sum of human calamity ; if all these 
numberless and nameless woes have been brought 
upon the land, because Mr. Jefferson Davis was 
not nominated nor Mr. John C. Breckenridge 
chosen President, then, so sure as Heaven is just, 
the tears of the bereaved, the pangs of the 
wounded, the agonies of the dying, will lie 
heavy on the souls of the authors of these 
crimes and woes ; their memories will go down 
to the execration of the latest posterity ; and their 
names stand recorded on the page of history by 
the side of the Benedict Arnolds, the Catilines, 
the Judas Iscariots of modern and of ancient times! 
On the grim and bloody catalogue which 
history unrolls to teach and to warn us, we 
read of the merciless wars of the Assyrians and 
Chaldeans, of the Medes and Persians, which 
desolated the fairest regions of the earth in the 
morning of the world ; of the disastrous conflicts 
of the Confederate States of Greece, in which 
their short-lived prosperity was blasted, their 
cities razed, their fighting men massacred by 
thousands, their women and children sold into 
slavery, — prototype, as far as the laws of modern 
warfare permit, of the ruin which awaits our 



£8 ADDRESS BEFORE 

Union, if the poison of secession is admitted 
into the veins of the body politic; of the steadily 
growing ferocity and the murderous struggles of 
party in the Roman Republic, passing through 
the bloody gates of proscription and civil war 
to the dreary calm of a merciless despotism, at 
whose abominations human nature stands aghast. 
We read of the contests which shook the world 
between the Mohammedan and Christian powers 
in the Middle Ages, of the secular wars of the 
Italian republics, of the factions which rent 
the vitals of England for generations, of the 
wars of the Reformation, of the Thirty Years' 
War in Germany, of the wars of Louis XIV. 
and the Spanish Succession, of the constantly 
renewed struggle for the balance of power in 
Europe, and finally of the gigantic wars of the 
French Revolution; but I defy any one to produce 
in all these bloody pages the record of a war 
undertaken to overthrow a government admitted 
to be, by those who levy the war, the most per- 
fect, the best administered, the most productive of 
prosperity which the world has seen. That mad- 
ness was reserved for the annals of this rebellion ; 
and I do not scruple to say, that, from the earliest 
dates of history to the present time, there is not 
on record a war so unprovoked, so causeless, so 
unprincipled, so pregnant with bootless suffering 
to all concerned, so destructive of good, so fertile 
of crime and woe, as the war now waged by 



THE UNION CLUB. gg 

the ambitious oligarchy of the South for the 
purpose of breaking up this mild and beneficent 
government. 

We often hear it said that measures of 
compromise, and especially the adoption of the 
Crittenden Resolutions, would, in the winter of 
1860-61, have been accepted by the South, and 
would have prevented the war, and that similar 
measures if now tendered, would restore the Union. 
I have no belief of either. Never since the war 
broke out has there been the slightest intimation 
that the South would treat with the United States, 
on any other basis than the recognition of the 
Confederacy and the dismemberment of the 
Union, — the object which for thirty years has 
been steadily pursued by a party in the Cotton 
States. To draw the Border States and especially 
Virginia into the same policy was the great 
problem to be solved in the winter of 1860-61, 
and with what lamentable success the present 
state of the country but too plainly attests. 

The Crittenden Resolutions, as we all know, 
were brought forward in the Senate at the com- 
mencement of the session of 1860-61. They 
were intended, by their venerable and patriotic 
mover, to afford a ground on which the Border 
Slave States could stand, solid enough to resist the 
torrent of secession. I must confess I was in 
favor of them, or of something resembling them ; 
but it was soon apparent that the Secession leaders 



30 ADDRESS BEFORE 

were determined they should not be adopted. They 
were opposed at the North by those who deemed 
no further concessions on the subject of Slavery 
necessary or expedient ; and they were opposed by 
the senators of the Cotton-growing States, who 
were not only determined to accept for themselves 
no terms of compromise, but to prevent, if possible, 
the adoption of any measures which would satisfy 
the Border Slave States. These facts form the key 
to the course pursued in the Senate on the Critten- 
den Resolutions. When they came up for consid- 
eration, Mr. Clark of New Hampshire moved, as 
a substitute for the entire series, a short resolution 
to the effect that the provisions of the Constitution 
itself were adequate to the preservation of the 
Union, which Mr. Jefferson Davis about the same 
time had expressly admitted to be the case. The 
test question was on the adoption of this substitute, 
and this question was taken on the 16th of Janu- 
ary. The senators from South Carolina had not 
occupied their seats, for any part of the session. 
Mississippi seceded on the 9th of January, and 
Florida and Alabama on the 11th; after which 
time the senators from those States, though re- 
maining in Washington, were absent from their 
places. Eight votes, which might have been given 
from the Cotton-growing States, in favor of the 
Crittenden Resolutions, were lost in this way. 

Nor was this the only, nor the most significant, 
indication of the wish of those States to defeat a 



THE UNION CLUB. g] 

compromise. When the question on the adoptior 
of the resolutions was about to be put, a motion 
was made to postpone their consideration. It was 
decided in the negative by a vote of twenty-five ayes 
and thirty noes, all the senators present from the 
Cotton-growing" States voting 1 with the senators 
from the Border States against the postponement. 
The test question immediately followed on Mr. 
Clark's substitute for the Crittenden Resolutions ; 
no other business intervened ; nor a word was 
uttered by any member of the Senate, and yet, 
to the astonishment of all not in the secret, forty- 
eight votes only were given, instead of fifty-five, as 
on the question immediately preceding. Twenty- 
five votes were cast in favor of the substitute of 
Mr. Clark, (being the same votes which had been 
given for the postponement,) and only twenty-three 
in favor of the Crittenden Resolutions. Seven sen- 
ators who a moment before had voted with the Bor- 
der States against the postponement, now omitted 
to vote at all. Mr, Douglas was one of these, and 
stated to the Senate, a few moments afterwards, 
that having been accidentally called out, he unin- 
tentionally lost the opportunity of recording his 
vote in favor of the Crittenden Resolutions. The 
other six who withheld their votes were from the 
Cotton-growing States. Thus much appears from 
the journal of the Senate. How and why these six 
votes were withheld shall be told by Governor John- 
son, who was a member of the Senate at the time, 



32 ADDRESS BEFORE 

and took an active and patriotic part in the pro- 
ceedings. " Who was it," he asks, " that defeated 
the compromise ? There was one Judah Benja- 
min, who stood right before me in the Senate, and 
when his name was called refused to vote. Said I to 
him, ; Why don't you vote % ' Turning round rather 
abruptly, he replied, ' I will not consult you nor 
any other senator in reference to my vote.' I said, 
' Vote and comply with the Constitution and obey 
the rules of the Senate, and show yourself an honest 
man.' ' Five other senators from the Cotton 
States, Mr. Slidell among the number, followed 
Mr. Benjamin's example, and, though remaining 
in the Senate and not excused from voting, refused 
to answer when their names were called, and so 
Mr. Clark's substitute was adopted by a majority 
of two. As soon as the vote was declared (says 
Governor Johnson) a telegraphic message was sent 
by Mr. Benjamin to Louisiana, where the question 
of Secession was still pending, that the Crittenden 
Resolutions were lost and the Black Republicans 
were carrying everything before them. Had those 
six senators voted as it was their duty under the 
rules of the Senate to do, Mr. Clark's substitute 
for the Crittenden Resolutions would have failed by 
a majority of four. If the Senators from the four 
seceding States had been in their seats, this major- 
ity might have been increased to twelve. Six of 
them were in Washington, but they chose on the 
16th of January not to consider themselves as com- 



THE UNION CLUB. Qg 

petent to attend and give their votes in favor of 
the Crittenden Resolutions. Five days later they 
did consider themselves members sufficiently to 
make their appearance in the Senate Chamber, 
and insult their colleagues by going through a 
concerted and ostentatious ceremony of withdrawal. 

So much for the failure of the Crittenden Reso- 
lutions. This was the test vote. It was afterwards 
reconsidered on the motion of Mr. Cameron, made 
from personal courtesy to the venerable mover of 
the resolutions. Earnest debates took place, and 
various delays were interposed ; the resolutions 
of the Peace Congress were at length brought 
in, and adopted by Mr. Crittenden in lieu of his 
own resolutions ; the remaining Cotton States had 
seceded, and all hope of the adoption of an effective 
compromise was abandoned, — not however without 
the passage of a resolve, by the requisite majority 
of two thirds in both houses, proposing an amend- 
ment of the Constitution, to the effect that no 
change should hereafter be made in that instrument 
adverse to the interests of the South. How little 
was to be hoped from this or any other measure ot 
peace may be inferred from the remark of a leading 
member of the Committee of thirty-three from 
Alabama, that if the North would tender the South 
a blank sheet to write her own terms of compro- 
mise, the offer would not be accepted. 

Such was the feeling of the Cotton States in 
reference to compromise, when Secession was 
3 



34 ADDRESS BEFORE 

confined to seven States ; while the organization 
of the Confederacy was only an act of meditated 
treason ; before a gun was fired or a blow was 
struck. Can any one suppose, that, in the present 
state of things, when the leaders have 

"in blood 
Stept in so far, that, should they wade no more, 
Returning were as tedious as go o'er," 

those terms of adjustment would be accepted which 
were rejected with disdain before they had drawn 
the sword \ Let the affected contempt with which 
the organs of Southern opinion, official and unoffi- 
cial, allude to the pacific tone that has occasionally 
found utterance at the North, return an answer to 
the question.* 

No, my Friends, there is no alternative but to 
acknowledge the independence of the Confederacy, 
or to subdue the Rebellion by the strong arm of 
military power. To suppose that there is hope of 
any other settlement is the grossest delusion. 

Can you then recognize the independence of the 
Confederacy ? Remember that it carries with it 
acknowledged defeat, in a war of aggression, arro- 
gantly provoked, by an enemy notoriously inferior 
in numbers, financial means, and all the resources 
of war ; and that a peace made on that basis would 
be a standing invitation, not only to foreign pow- 
ers, in all our disputes, to disregard our rights, but 
to an insolent antagonist, flushed with triumph, to 
* See Appendix. 



THE UNION CLUB. 35 

resort, on every future occasion of controversy 
between the two governments, to menace, insult, 
and invasion. We must, as showing the character 
of the antagonist with whom we have to deal, not 
forget the immediate cause of the present war, 
which is too apt to be overlooked, in consequence 
of the vast dimensions to which the contest has 
swelled. It was simply that Mr. Buchanan re- 
fused to enter into a negotiation w r ith a deputation 
from South Carolina for the cession or the sale of 
Fort Sumter. Now on the supposition that the 
demand of Carolina was as legitimate and reason- 
able as it was groundless and absurd, still to rush at 
once into a war for such a reason was what might 
be expected of a tribe of savages, rather than from 
a community of civilized men. What ! in a time of 
profound peace, and in the face of a disclaimer on 
the part of the President of any intention to increase 
the garrison or the armament of the post, then 
occupied but by a single company, to open upon it 
without a shadow of provocation, from eleven bat- 
teries ; to cannonade it with red-hot shot, because 
the general government did not see fit to evacuate 
it and surrender the public property, at the first tap 
of the rebel drum, — why it is the work of 
madmen, sufficient of itself to justify the reply of 
Judge Petigru, who, when asked by a stranger the 
way to the lunatic asylum, told him he could not 
go amiss in South Carolina. Can an ignominious 
peace, at the close of a war thus inaugurated, lead 



QQ ADDRESS BEFORE 

to anything but a renewal of hostilities on the first 
paltry dispute ] 

Then, too, we must remember that the recognition 
of the Confederacy is the prostration of the govern- 
ment, and the dismemberment of the territory of the 
United States, over which that government is le- 
gally and constitutionally established. Such has 
rarely, if ever, been the case, at least to anything 
like the same extent, in the revolutions^ the civil 
wars, and the rebellions of Europe. Most of 
those wars have been dynastic struggles, or contests 
to maintain the balance of power, or sustain the 
national influence and honor. Limited changes of 
jurisdiction have sometimes followed, but never 
assuredly such a hideous territorial sacrifice as this 
rebellion demands of the government of the United 
States. Twice within the last quarter of a century, 
and while our politics were controlled by the South, 
we have been on the point of a war with England 
to maintain our right to a corner of the State of 
Maine, and to an island on the Pacific coast, which, 
till the difficulty arose, was not of consequence 
enough to have been laid down in the maps of the re- 
gion. We are now expected to give up to a foreign 
power, (and a bitterly hostile foreign power it will 
be,) and that under the coercion of a barbarous war 
waged upon a wretched metaphysical quibble, half 
this fair territory of the United States ; a sea-coast 
of near two thousand miles ; some of the best har- 
bors and naval and military stations of the country; 



THE UNION CLUB. gj 

the fortresses that guard our coastwise commerce ; 
some of the great lines of communication East and 
West, North and South ; the control of the navi- 
gation of the Gulf of Mexico and of the outlet of 
that great system of internal waters which gives its 
character to the central basin of the Continent ; to 
give it up, too, on a principle in virtue of which 
each and every one of the seceding States may fall 
into the arms of any European power that chooses 
to persuade or coerce the surrender. To suppose 
such a thing possible on the part of the United 
States, except at the last spasm of national strength, 
the last sigh of national honor, the last struggle 
of national agony, would be to apply to the whole 
country Judge Petigru's conception of the sanity 
of South Carolina. 

Can any man look at a map of the Union and 
then seriously entertain the opinion that the United 
States, brought as I have just said to the very 
verge of a war with Great Britain, after a diplo- 
matic struggle of sixty years, for the possession of 
a few acres of unsettled land on the banks of the 
Aroostook, are going to permit a foreign power to 
entrench itself at the entrance of Chesapeake Bay? 
and possess itself of all the territory south of a 
boundary stretching westwardly, wherever it 
chooses to draw the lines, over the hills, through 
the central plains, across the Rocky Mountains, to 
the setting sun ? What ! a foreign power to hold 
the strait, twelve miles wide, between Cape Charles 



38 ADDRESS BEFORE 

and Cape Henry, sure, at the first outbreak of 
border war with the North, to admit some hostile 
foreign navy into Chesapeake Bay ] Is the route 
by which Howe's army, in the Revolution, moved 
from New York to the conquest of Philadelphia 
so soon forgotten ? Many of you have crossed the 
Susquehanna, the noble river which enters that 
bay at its head. Has it occurred to you, in con- 
nection with this recognition of the Southern Con- 
federacy as a foreign power, to ask yourselves 
where this noble river rises'? Not in Maryland, 
the State in which it enters the bay ; not in 
Pennsylvania, or not mainly in Pennsylvania, 
whose central valleys it clothes with beauty and 
abundance ; but far up in the northeastern section 
of Central New York. Many Bostonians frequent 
Sharon Springs, and while there they visit Coop- 
erstown, the home of our great novelist, and 
Otsego Lake. Every drop of water which flows 
from that lake to the ocean enters it between 
Cape Charles and Cape Henry. Cast another 
look on the map, and see that magnificent Bal- 
timore and Ohio Railroad, the grandest piece of 
engineering upon the Continent, and the noble 
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which reaches the 
foot of the mountains by its side. Besides the 
almost boundless travel and transportation from 
the West, eight hundred thousand tons of coal 
went from the mines of Cumberland to tide- water, 
the year before the war, by these two lines of 



THE UNION CLUB. 39 

communication. For eighty or ninety miles this 
magnificent railroad passes over the sacred soil of 
Virginia; and the first achievement of the seceding 
lords of the soil was to burn or blow up the 
bridges, seize the locomotives, tear up the rails of 
the road, and break down the dams of the canal, 
and thus cut off" this most important line of com- 
munication between the Atlantic coast and the 
interior. Nor was this merely for military mo- 
tives ; the Richmond press spoke of the railroad 
as a " nuisance," because it competed with their 
own tardily advancing works of internal communi- 
cation. Are Ohio and the other Northwestern 
States going to hold one of their chief routes to the 
seaboard by this precarious tenure] Again, look 
at the map, and consider the position of Key West, 
of the Tortugas, and of Fort Pickens. It was 
truly stated by Lieut. Maury, in an official report 
some years ago, that whoever commands them 
controls the navigation of the Gulf of Mexico. 
Are you going to resign these dominant stations to 
the little foreign State of Florida, whose whole 
population, white and black, does not equal that of 
either of the counties of Suffolk, Middlesex, Essex, 
or Worcester ] A puny State, which, if the Confed- 
eracy is recognized, is not unlikely in a few years 
to be recolonized by Spain, by the same process 
which has been lately gone through at San Domin- 
go. What is to prevent her, if this notable doc- 
trine of secession prevails, from leaving the South- 



40 ADDRESS BEFORE 

ern Confederacy as she has left the United States, 
and carrying Key West, the Tortugas, and the 
island of Santa Rosa along with her ] Look, 
finally, at the map and trace the course of the 
mighty stream that drains the central basin of the 
Continent. Follow it from its outlet in the gulf, up 
the main channel, to the junction with the Ohio, 
and up that beautiful river to the confluence of the 
Monongahela and the Alleghany, the one coming 
down from the northwestern corner of Virginia, 
the other from the southwestern corner of New 
York ; then up the Mississippi itself a thousand 
miles above the junction with the Ohio, with seven 
States upon its banks, to the highlands which divide 
its waters from those which flow into the Arctic 
sea i then up the Missouri two thousand miles to 
the inmost recesses of the Rocky Mountains, form- 
ing, with a hundred tributaries, each as large as 
the Hudson, the grandest system of internal water 
communication on the face of the globe; its banks 
occupied even now by twelve loyal States, and ten 
millions of freemen who own the soil they till, 
destined in the lapse of another half-century, to say 
the least, to double their numbers and their re- 
sources ; make this survey, and then tell me who 
dares, that the United States, to whom, on the 
highest considerations of national and international 
policy, this imperial domain was ceded by the first 
Napoleon two generations ago, are going to give 
up its portals to the keeping of a foreign State, 



THE VNWN CLUB. 44 

whose free population is less than three hundred 
and sixty thousand, and who, if this wretched quib- 
ble of secession is recognized as a part of the Pub- 
lic Law, may, if she chooses, retrocede herself to 
France to-morrow. 

I call it a wretched quibble, and a recent almost 
providential disclosure shows that its authors con- 
sider it so themselves. A few months since the 
despatches of the Confederate Government to their 
agents in Europe fell into the hands of one of our 
cruizers. From one of them it appeared, that, in 
the course of the last summer, the French Vice- 
Consul at Galveston, without the slightest indirec- 
tion or attempt at concealment, addressed a letter 
to the Governor of Texas, inquiring whether, in 
his opinion, it would not promote the prosperity 
of Texas to establish her separate independence. 
About the same time, a similar inquiry was ad- 
dressed by the French Consular Agent at Richmond 
to one of the Texan senators. This simple inquiry, 
to which a civil answer was returned by the Gov- 
ernor and Senator of Texas, was denounced by Mr. 
Secretary Benjamin as an act " of hostility to the 
Confederacy ; " Mr. Slidell was instructed to call 
the Emperor Louis Napoleon to account for his al- 
leged complicity in this " intrigue ; " and the unfor- 
tunate vice-consuls were ordered by Mr. Davis " to 
be expelled from the Confederacy" at twenty-four 
hours' notice. Steeped to the lips in the blood that 
he is shedding to vindicate the right of a sovereign 



42 ADDRESS BEFORE 

State to secede, he expels a couple of foreign con- 
suls from the country, because they inquired of the 
Governor and a senator of the State of Texas 
whether it might not be for her interest to exercise 
that right ! 

So absurd, so flagrantly insincere, so openly re- 
pudiated by its authors, are the pretexts of this 
unholy war. What remains but that we should 
strenuously and loyally support the government of 
the country in bringing it to a victorious result ] 
Peace on any other terms will be nothing but; a 
hollow truce, lasting only till fresh causes of con- 
troversy arise and the means of renewed aggression 
and outrage are accumulated. Toward the suc- 
cessful prosecution of the war every good citizen 
is bound to contribute to the utmost by word and 
deed, by personal service, if of age to render it, by 
his counsel, with his purse, if need be with his life. 
If he can do nothing else, let him at least speak 
words of patriotic cheer, seeking to inspire the 
community with confidence, to strengthen the arm 
of the government in the discharge of its arduous 
duties, and to animate our brave fellow-citizens so 
gallantly serving in the armies and navy of the 
country. What we now want is not so much 
strength in the field as union at home ; or rather till 
we have cordial union at home, we never shall have 
overwhelming strength in the field. Do not, for 
Heaven's sake, let us reenact the fatal blunder that 
has been committed by free States since the dawn 



THE UNION CLUB. 43 

of history. The strength of Philip of Macedon was 
in the divided counsels of the Greeks. Do not let 
the strength of the Rebellion be in the want of 
harmony in the loyal States. 

But it may be asked, How can men support the 
Administration in the conduct of the war, if they do 
not approve its measures] How, I ask in return, 
can any free government carry on a war, if every 
one is to stand aloof, who does not approve all its 
measures ] That the war must be carried on till 
the Rebellion is subdued, is the all but unanimous 
sentiment of the loyal States. It is as much the 
interest of the South as of the North to hasten 
this consummation, for she suffers infinitely more 
than the North by the continuance of the war, and 
there can be no return to a state of general and 
permanent prosperity on any other condition. That 
errors will be committed, errors of judgment cer- 
tainly, errors of purpose perhaps, on the part of 
individuals, is sure to happen in all wars. Com- 
manders of armies, members of cabinets, members 
of Congress, Generals, Secretaries, and Presidents 
are fallible men, subject to like passions as we are. 
I do not at all deny, that it is our right and duty to 
watch and criticise their conduct ; but we must not 
forget that critics, editors, and orators are also 
fallible. While we sit in quiet and safety by our 
firesides, and inveigh against those who bear the 
heat and burden of the day, who carry upon their 
shoulders the thankless burden of official duty, and 



44 , ADDRESS . BEFORE 

the heavy responsibility of results, which often de- 
pend on the elements and on casualties beyond hu- 
man control, we must keep in mind that we also 
have our interests, our prejudices, and our passions, 
and that it is much easier to find fault, than to pur- 
sue any coursb of conduct which will escape censure 
in a fault-finding community. There are two ways 
of doing everything ; and when duty constrains us 
to find fault with the shortcomings of our rulers 
and our generals, we should, if possible, do it in 
such a manner as not to give aid and comfort to 
the rulers and generals of the enemy. 

Among the patriotic inculcations of Washington's 
Farewell Address, none are more emphatic than 
those which relate to the evils of party spirit, un- 
avoidable as the existence of party seems to be in 
free States and in prosperous times. Brief lulls 
there may be, as in President Monroe's Admin- 
istration ; but such temporary calms, as in that 
case, occur only after violent agitations, and are 
likely to be followed by them. So inseparable 
from free government is the existence of party felt 
to be in England, that, while the Ministers are 
styled Her Majesty's Government, their opponents 
have been called Her Majesty's Opposition. Every 
one, however, must feel, that, even in time of peace, 
the indiscriminate and vehement opposition, which 
the spirit and the policy of party are sure to make to 
almost every important measure of the Government, 
is productive of embarrassment and delay, often of 



THE UXIOX CLUB. 45 

more serious evils in the conduct of the public 
business ; that it makes public life distasteful to 
many virtuous citizens capable of rendering- impor- 
tant service to the country; and thus tends to throw 
the management of affairs into the hands of un- 
scrupulous and unprincipled men. All these evils 
are indefinitely multiplied and aggravated in a state 
of war, with the additional evil, far exceeding all 
the rest, that an indiscriminate opposition, in pro- 
portion to its vigor and warmth, paralyzes the arm 
of your own government, and strengthens that of 
the common enemy. 

The existing" administration came into office 
in the result of a strenuous party contest, and it 
was therefore natural that it should be organized 
on a purely party basis. Could it have been 
foreseen that in less than six weeks the country 
would be plunged into a contest which would 
task to the utmost all its strength and require 
the employment of all its resources, material and 
moral, the attempt perhaps would have been made 
to place the administration on a broader basis. 
This, however, could not be foreseen; and the 
President has not yet found it practicable, or if 
practicable not expedient, as far as civil affairs 
are concerned, to assume a position independent 
of party. Efforts in fact have been made, in the 
highest quarter, to induce him to organize the 
Executive on a still narrower party basis. Mean- 
time it must in justice be stated, that the ad minis- 



46 ADDRESS BEFORE 

tration has been as liberally supported by those 
who did not as by those who did contribute to 
place it in power, and as formidably assailed by 
its nominal adherents as by its reputed opponents. 
I belonged, I need not say, to the latter class ; not 
that I was much of a Bell and Everett man, for 
if, in Parliamentary phrase, it had been possible 
to divide the question, I should have voted against 
the candidate for the Vice-Presidency on that 
ticket. I did all in my power to prevent his 
nomination, and to get him excused when it was 
made. I admit, however, that without being much 
of a partisan, I belong to the President's opposition. 
But what then 1 There is a loyalty of opposition 
as well as a loyalty of support. Shall I, because I 
am not a political supporter of the administration, 
sit quietly by and see the government overturned 
and the country dismembered] Because we did 
not vote for Mr. Lincoln's administration, must we 
hold back from the vigorous prosecution of the 
war, which is to prevent Mr. Davis from installing 
himself at Washington ? Because we may dis- 
approve of the removal of General McClellan, 
shall we do what we can to paralyze the arm of 
his successor] Such has not been the course 
of General McClellan himself. When he was ab- 
ruptly relieved from his command, after having, 
— with an army disheartened by recent reverses, 
and which he, in the language of the Confederate 
General Lee, reorganized as with " the enchant- 



THE UNION CLUB. 47 

er's wand," — in two nobly fought battles, rescued 
Washington and Baltimore from menaced capture, 
and preserved Maryland to the Union, instead of 
using the language of disaffection or even com- 
plaint, he exhorted the army, by which he was 
idolized, to be as faithful to General Burnside as 
it had been to him. Because we may doubt the 
policy of the Proclamations of the 22d September 
and 1st January, shall we, as far as in us lies, 
cooperate with the oligarchy of the seceding States 
in forcing their " peculiar institution " into the 
unoccupied territory of the Union ; in reopening 
the African slave-trade, for which their diplomacy 
is already making what it deems astute preparation; 
in overturning this most admirable Constitution of 
government, which in the intention of its venerable 
and patriotic founders, South as well as North, 
contemplated only the temporary toleration and 
gradual disappearance of involuntary servitude; 
and in establishing, and that at the cost of a 
desolating civil war, a new Confederacy on the 
corner-stone of Slavery] 

But it may be asked, again, How can we support 
an administration which adopts measures that we 
deem unconstitutional] I should certainly be a 
very unfaithful pupil of the political school in 
which I was trained, if I could ever hear the 
sacred name of the Constitution justly invoked 
without respect, or yield to it anything less than 
implicit obedience. It is, however, as great an 



48 ADDRESS BEFORE 

error to appeal to it where it does not apply, as to 
disregard it where it does ; and I must say that 
the study of our political history ought to teach 
us caution in this respect;; for, from the formation 
of the Government in 1789 to the present day, 
there has not been an important controverted 
measure — no, not one — which its party oppo- 
nents have not denounced as unconstitutional. It 
is one of the doctrines of the seceding school, that 
the government of the United States cannot con- 
stitutionally wage war against a sovereign State. 
But how if the sovereign State strikes the first 
blow, fires on your vessels, bombards and captures 
your forts, threatens your capital, and invades 
the loyal members of the Union who refuse to 
join in the war of aggression ] Few, I suppose, 
will doubt that the United States may constitu- 
tionally wage a war of self-defence against any 
enemy, domestic or foreign. But in waging 
this w r ar of self-defence, we cannot, in the opinion 
of some persons with whom I have usually acted, 
and whose judgment I greatly respect, go beyond 
the powers specially granted by the Constitution 
to the general government, for the purposes of 
ordinary administration in time of peace. This 
opinion seems to me to rest on a misconception of 
the authority under which war is waged. The 
Constitution authorizes Congress to declare war, 
to raise and support armies, and to provide and 
maintain a navy ; and it clothes the President with 



THE UNION CLUB. 49 

the power of commander-in-chief. It goes no 
further. It prescribes nothing as to the enemy 
against whom, the measures by which, nor the 
ends for which the war may be carried on. It 
gives no more power to wage war with a foreign 
State than with a domestic State ; and it is as si- 
lent on the subject of blockading the ports, as of 
seizing the cotton or of emancipating the slaves of 
a district in rebellion. The rights of war belong 
to the more comprehensive, in some respects the 
higher code of international law, to which not the 
government of the United States alone, but all 
civilized governments are amenable. By that au- 
gust code, all unjust wars are forbidden, and all 
unjust modes of waging just wars, no matter who 
may be the enemy or what the pretext ; while by 
the same code, all just wars, and eminently all wars 
of self-defence, and all warlike measures sanctioned 
by our Christian civilization are permitted, unless 
so far as they may be expressly prohibited by the 
municipal law of our own country. 

Now to say that no just war can be waged 
against any but a foreign power is simply begging 
the question. I cannot conceive a proposition 
more extravagant than that provocation the most 
offensive, and acts of aggression the most intoler- 
able, which would in every sane man's judgment 
authorize instant hostilities against a foreign State, 
must be tamely borne if committed under the 

pretended authority of a State associated with 
4 



50 ADDRESS BEFORE 

others in a federal union. Certainly, if any 
State connected with the British Government, 
by whatever relation, whether that of constitu- 
tional union, as Scotland and Ireland, or respon- 
sible colonial government, like the Anglo-American 
provinces, or some more absolute form of political 
dependence, had after years of preparation, public 
and private, the organization and training of 
troops and the purchase of arms ; eventually by 
more definite military measures, such as the 
construction and armament of forts and the 
concentration of soldiers ; and finally by overt 
acts, firing upon provision-ships sent to supply 
the imperial garrisons, the bombardment of the 
national forts, and the capture of the troops by 
which they were held, the seizure of arsenals, 
mints, custom-houses, navy-yards, and revenue 
cutters, — levied actual war against the central 
government, any person who should deny the 
authority of that government, by every means 
which the law of nations permits, to wage a war 
not only till the national property was recovered, 
but till the outrage was chastised, and effectual 
security obtained that it would never be repeated, 
would, in any country but this, be deemed a 
driveller. 

Even if it were true that the Constitution 
required a different mode of carrying on war in 
the cases of a foreign and domestic enemy, which 
it certainly does not, the people of the seceding 



THE UNION CLUB. $\ 

States not only claim to be foreigners, but we 
are compelled, by the magnitude of the forces 
engaged, and by the course of the great maritime 
powers in recognizing them as belligerents, to 
regard them ourselves in that light. Instead of 
punishing them as traitors and rebels when they 
fall into our hands, as the municipal law of our 
own and of all other countries, and their practice 
too, would warrant us in doing, we treat them 
of necessity as alien enemies. Prisoners are 
exchanged and paroled, flags of truce sent and 
received ; and they enjoy in all respects the 
privileges and are subject to all the obligations, 
which by the Law of Nations pertain to public 
war. These privileges and these obligations are 
not defined by the Constitution of the United 
States, but by the International Code. It is this, 
and not the municipal law, which authorizes the 
blockade of the ports, the occupation of the 
cities, and the invasion of the territory of the 
seceding States; and it would be a strange in- 
consequence to hold that the same persons could 
as citizens of the United States, though in re- 
bellion, demand the privileges guaranteed by the 
Constitution, while as alien enemies they are ex- 
empted from the penalties of treason. 

Suppose our misunderstandings with Spain, a 
few years ago, had culminated in a declaration 
of war on her part against the United States, and 
the sovereign State of Florida, but lately a Spanish 



52 ADDRESS BEFORE 

colony, in virtue of this wonder-working doctrine 
of secession, had thought fit to withdraw from the 
Union, carrying with her Key West, the Tortugas, 
and Fort Pickens, and had formed an alliance, 
offensive and defensive, with Spain. Would any 
one doubt that the United States could, without 
violating the Constitution, invade Florida in order 
to recover the public property, — the islands, the 
forts, and the national establishments thus seized ; 
to repel the enemy ; to chastise these acts of hos- 
tility to the national government, and to take ef- 
fectual security that they should not be repeated ? 
Would not the government of the United States, 
without violating the Constitution, be authorized to 
do precisely the same things in Florida as in Cuba? 
Would not, for instance, the arming and the em- 
ploying of the slaves in this just war, as allies 
inured to the climate and acquainted with the coun- 
try, be as legitimate on one side of the Gulf of 
Florida as on the other ; and would not their em- 
ployment under the authority of the United States 
and the control and direction of its officers, instead 
of tending to a servile war and the massacre of the 
unarmed and defenceless, (at which humanity re- 
volts,) be the surest means of preventing such bar- 
barities, and reducing this frightful element of 
danger within the limits of Christian warfare 1 
Deprecating as I do beyond the power of words to 
express the heart-sickening horrors of a servile in- 
surrection, nothing has seemed to me so likely to 



THE UNION CLUB. 53 

prevent its occurrence, as to subject the colored 
population in those parts of the country where war 
is carried on and where the danger of such a ca- 
lamity is greatest, to the restraints of military 
discipline and the control of responsible author- 
ity. 

But it is time to draw this discussion to a close. 
War is justly regarded as one of the greatest evils 
that can befall a nation, though it is not the greatest, 
and of this great evil, civil war is the most deplora- 
ble form. Thus far, it is true, we have the satis- 
faction of reflecting, notwithstanding the barbarities 
inflicted upon Union men in the seceding States, 
that the contest has been carried on without the 
atrocities which have been too apt, in all ages and 
countries, to mark the progress of civil war. Still 
it is a dire calamity. I want words to express the 
sorrow with which from the first I have contem- 
plated, and unceasingly contemplate, the necessity 
laid upon us, to wage this war for the integrity of 
the Nation. I recoiled from it to the last. Few 
persons, I think, have entertained visions more 
glowing of the amount of blessings stored up for 
the latest posterity in the perpetual Union of the 
States. I had seen them already expanded from 
sixteen States and four million inhabitants, which 
were the numbers at the time of my birth, to a 
family of thirty-four States and a population aug- 
mented eightfold; and reason and imagination 
were alike tasked to find a limit to the natural 



54 ADDRESS BEFORE 

growth of the country. But numbers and space 
are but the relation of material things. I saw 
exemplified in this Western world, long hidden, 
and late revealed, the idea of a form of govern- 
ment as nearly perfect as our frail nature admits, 
— prodigal of blessings to the millions now on the 
stage, and promising a share in the same rich 
inheritance to the millions on millions that should 
follow us. I grew up beneath the shadow of our 
beautiful flag, and often, when I have seen it float- 
ing on distant seas, my heart has melted at the 
thought of the beloved* and happy land whose union 
was emblazoned on its streaming folds. On a 
hundred festive and patriotic occasions my voice 
has dwelt — would it had been more worthily — - 
on the grateful theme ; and my prayer to Heaven 
has been, that it might be hushed in death, rather 
than it should be compelled to abandon that auspi- 
cious strain. Not without deep solicitude I saw 
the angry clouds gathering in the horizon North 
and South; and I devoted the declining years of 
my life, with a kind of religious consecration, to 
the attempt to freshen the sacred memories that 
cluster round that dear and venerated name which 
I need not repeat, — memories which had sur- 
vived the multiplying causes of alienation, and were 
so well calculated to strengthen the cords of the 
Union. To these humble efforts and the time and 
labor expended upon them, truly a labor of love, 
I would, as Heaven is my witness, have cheer- 



THE UNION CLUB. 55 

fully added the sacrifice of my life, if by so doing I 
could have averted the catastrophe. For that cause, 
I should have thought a few careworn and weary 
years cheaply laid on the altar of my country. 

But it could not be. A righteous Providence in 
its wisdom has laid upon us — even upon us — 
the performance of this great and solemn duty. It 
is now plain to the dullest perception, that the hour 
of trial could not be much longer delayed. The 
leaders of the Rebellion tell us themselves that they 
had plotted and planned it for an entire generation. 
It might have been postponed for four years or for 
eight years, but it was sure in no long time to 
come ; and if, by base compliance, we could have 
turned the blow from ourselves, it would have fallen 
with redoubled violence on our children. 

Let us, then, meet it like men. It must needs be 
that offences shall come, but woe unto that man by 
whom the offence cometh. Let us show ourselves 
equal to the duty imposed upon us, and faithful to 
the trust to which we are called. The cause in 
which we are engaged is the cause of the Constitu- 
tion and the Law, of civilization and freedom, of 
man and of God. Let us engage in it with a 
steadiness and fortitude, a courage and a zeal, a 
patience and a resolution, a hope and a cheer, 
worthy of the Fathers from whom we are descended, 
of the country we defend, and of the privileges we 
inherit. There is a call and a duty, a work and a 
place for all ; — for man and for woman, for rich and 



56 ADDRESS BEFORE THE UNION CLUB. 

for poor, for old and for young, for the stout- 
hearted and strong-handed, for all who enjoy and 
all who deserve to enjoy the priceless blessings at 
stake. Let the venerable forms of the Pilgrim 
Fathers, the majestic images of our revolutionary 
sires, and of the sages that gave us this glorious 
Union ; let the anxious expectation of the Friends 
of Liberty abroad, awakened at last to the true 
cause and the great issues of this contest ; let the 
hardships and perils of our brethren in the field, 
and the fresh-made graves of the dear ones who 
have fallen ; let every memory of the past and 
every hope of the future ; every thought and every 
feeling, that can nerve the arm, or fire the heart, or 
elevate and purify the soul of a patriot, — rouse and 
guide and cheer and inspire us, to do, and, if need 
be, to die, for our Country ! 



APPENDIX. 



THE DISUNION POLICY OF THE COTTON STATES, AND THE 
PROCEEDINGS IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 
ON THE CRITTENDEN RESOLUTIONS. 

It will not, I suppose, be expected of me, in this place, to 
enter at length into controversy on the subject of my Address. 
I shall, however, briefly reply to the exceptions, which have 
been taken to two of ray statements. 

One is, that the dismemberment of the Union is ft a policy, 
which had been steadily pursued by the Cotton States for 
thirty years." This has been called a sweeping assertion 
inconsistent with facts, with which we are all familiar. The 
facts alluded to are the votes, which, during the last thirty 
years, have been given at the South for candidates, who 
cannot be suspected of favoring the dismemberment of the 
Union ; — Votes (it is urged) which exhibit " no symptom 
of unanimity of action for any specific purpose, much less 
for dismemberment of the Union." 

No one, I suppose, would have dissented from my propo- 
sition if I had stated it in these words : " The policy of dis- 
memberment has been steadily pursued for thirty years, in 
the Cotton-growing States, till it has resulted in the accom- 
plishment of that object." This, however, was precisely 
what I meant. I could not be supposed to be ignorant of 
facts with which " all are familiar," or in the face of those 
facts to maintain that the Cotton States had been "unani- 
mous" on the subject of dismemberment or anything else. 



58 APPENDIX. 

The existence of a union party in the Cotton-growing 
States, down even to the outbreak of the rebellion, was dis- 
tinctly recognized by me in the early part of my address. 
The process was necessarily gradual in the individual State, 
and still more so with reference to concerted action with 
other States. In South Carolina the disunion policy did 
reach the point of organized State action as early as 1832. 
One of the leaders in the seceding Convention in 1860 said, 
" We have this day consummated the work of forty years." 
There was a patriotic minority headed by Poinsett, Petigru, 
and Grimke, who opposed this mad policy, but that did not 
make it the less true, that the State was pursuing it, and 
that up to the very verge of civil war. It was checked at 
the time by the Force Bill and General Jackson's coercive 
demonstrations, followed by Mr. Clay's compromise ; but the 
agitation was soon transferred from the Tariff to the Slavery 
question, both being declared by General Jackson thirty 
years ago, to be mere " pretexts," while " the real objects 
were disunion and a Southern Confederacy." The usual 
machinery was put in motion on this new issue, not only 
in South Carolina, but throughout the Cotton-growing States. 
Inflammatory resolutions were passed by State Legislatures ; 
delegates were sent to disunion caucuses held under the 
name of Commercial Conventions ; the elections turned 
more and more on the doctrine of State-Rights, which, in 
the vocabulary of the Cotton-growing States, meant the 
right of secession ; members of Congress from those States 
asserted that right in the most defiant manner, and leading 
journals assiduously fanned the flames. This line of oper- 
ation is not only consistent with the existence of a Union 
party, but was rendered necessary by it. If the Cotton- 
growing States had been unanimous, as I am supposed to 
have stated, it would of course not have required thirty 
years to bring on the crisis ; but that the resolution to effect 
that object was taken in the Cotton States more than thirty 
years ago, and steadily pursued to its accomplishment, is not 



APPENDIX. *Q 

only, I conceive, as certain as anything in contemporary 
political history, but is matter of boast, on the part of some 
of its most active promoters at the present day. I would 
request any one who doubts the substantial accuracy of this 
statement, to read the " Partisan Leader," a political Ro- 
mance written by Professor Beverly Tucker, of William 
and Mary College, submitted to Mr. Calhoun in manuscript, 
and privately printed by General Duff Green, in 1836, w T ith 
the fictitious date of 1856 ; and soon suppressed. 

Among the facts alleged against my statement, I have 
been rather reproachfully reminded, that Virginia, in 1860, 
voted for Bell and Everett. How this tends to disprove my 
assertion relative to the disunion policy of the Cotton-grow- 
ing States, I do not see. I do however see in it an addi- 
tional reason, why those States, as I alleged, should espe- 
cially desire to win over Virginia to that policy. 

The other statement in my Address, to which exception 
has been taken and earnestly pressed, relates to the proceed- 
ings in the Senate of the United States in 1860-61, on the 
Crittenden Resolutions. I do not understand that the accu- 
racy of my narrative of facts is questioned, but I am charged 
with omitting other facts, which entirely change the aspect 
of the case, relieving the senators from the Cotton-growing 
States from the responsibility of defeating those resolutions, 
and placing it on the Republican senators. The facts which 
I am supposed to have omitted are, that the Republican 
senators voted against those resolutions, while Messrs. Davis 
and Toombs, leading senators from the Cotton States had, 
according to Mr. Douglas, declared that they would be satis- 
fied with them. 

The first of these facts was not omitted by me. In my 
necessarily brief narrative of proceedings, which occupied 
much of the time of the Senate during the whole session, I 
stated that the Crittenden Resolutions were opposed by those 
at the North, who deemed no further concessions on the 



60 APPENDIX. 

subject of slavery necessary or expedient, (meaning of 
course the Republican senators ;) that a substitute for them 
was moved by Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, (well known 
as a prominent Republican senator,) and I gave the vote on 
the test question, by which the substitute was carried and 
the resolutions were rejected. But it is most true, that I 
made no allusion to the statement of Judge Douglas to the 
effect, that Messrs. Davis and Toombs had declared, in the 
committee of thirteen, that they would accept the Crittenden 
Resolutions, if tendered and sustained by the Republican 
senators, and consequently that the latter, and not the sena- 
tors from the Cotton States, were, in his judgment, respon- 
sible for their defeat. 

Now, on a point of this kind, Judge Douglas was not in a 
condition to give an impartial opinion. He had just come 
out of a strenuous political contest for the Presidency, in 
which he had been unsuccessful. The Republican party 
charged him, in the progress of that contest, with having 
pursued a course on the Kansas-Nebraska affair, which was 
the immediate cause of the existing crisis ; and he now re- 
taliated by throwing on them the responsibility of the defeat 
of the Crittenden Resolutions. In this I did not and do not 
concur with him. 

With respect to the supposed willingness of Messrs. Davis 
and Toombs and the other senators from the Cotton-growing 
States " to accept " the Crittenden Resolutions, it was purely 
illusory, nor does it appear to have been regarded in any 
other light on either side of the Senate. I do not find any 
notice of it, as affording aid to the solution of the question, 
by any subsequent speaker. It is not, for instance, alluded 
to by Mr. Crittenden in his earnest appeal to senators to 
unite in this adjustment. If he had believed that there was 
anything substantial in it, he would not have failed to urge 
it as a powerful argument, why the extreme North should 
be willing to meet the extreme South on his resolutions, as 
a common ground of settlement. 



APPENDIX. 51 

If Messrs. Davis, Toombs, and their associates from the 
Cotton-growing States, were willing to accept the Crittenden 
Resolutions as a final settlement, why did they not vote for 
them ? They could have carried them by a majority of 
twelve, and there was no reason why they should not vote 
for them, as well as Messrs. Hunter and Mason and the 
other senators from the border Slave States. What availed 
some vague expression of satisfaction with these resolutions, 
on the part of the senators from the Cotton-growing States, 
when partly by absenting themselves, and partly by refusing 
to vote, they allowed them to be defeated ? 

These resolutions were moved by their venerable author 
as a compromise. What sort of a compromise is that, to 
which one of the parties, while vaguely professing a quali- 
fied and illusory adhesion, refuses the support of his vote ? 
But even in Mr. Douglas's statement, this is the only ad- 
hesion which Messrs. Davis and Toombs promised. They 
would not and did not themselves vote for these resolutions, 
but they would " accept " them, not if passed in the usual 
form of legislative action by the Senate, but if " tendered 
and sustained by the Republican members." The latter were 
not to be allowed to do what the seceders actually did a few 
days after, namely, stand by and leave the resolutions to be 
adopted on their merits. The seceders would only " accept 
them as a final settlement of the controversy, if tendered 
and sustained by the Republican members." 

The circumstances under which this gracious offer was 
made necessarily rendered it altogether illusory. The State 
of Mississippi (Mr. Davis's State) had formally resolved 
that, if a Republican President were chosen, she would con- 
cert with her sister States the measures of resistance to be 
adopted. South Carolina had actually broken from the 
Union, had seized the custom-house and post-office, was 
making military preparations to seize the forts, and a week 
before the vote on the Crittenden Resolutions was taken, had 
fired on the " Star of the West," that is, had levied actual 



62 APPENDIX. 

war against the United States. Messrs. Iverson, Benjamin, 
and Wigfall, had declared in the strongest terms, in the Sen- 
ate, that their three States would infallibly follow suit, and 
that it was " too late " for compromise. Mr. Davis, in a care- 
fully prepared speech, had maintained that no legislative 
measures or amendments of the Constitution would be of any 
avail, without a change in the temper of the people of the 
Free States ; — a speech manifestly intended, in advance, to 
preclude the healing effect of any measures of conciliation ; 
and Mr. Toombs, in a speech of singular ferocity and bitter- 
ness, had set forth the unalterable determination of Georgia 
to leave the Union. To expect under these circumstances, 
that the Republican party, which had just prevailed in a 
strenuous canvass in which all the States had taken part, 
would " tender and sustain " a series of resolutions, which 
(though not so intended by their venerable mover) were 
regarded by themselves and their seceding opponents as a 
rebuke of their party and of their platform, and which were 
to " be accepted " by those who were daily addressing them 
in the language of scorn and detestation, as a proof of change 
of heart on the part of themselves and their constituents, is 
really asking too much of poor human nature. Certainly, 
I wish that the Republican senators could at least have 
allowed the resolutions to pass, though that was not what 
was imperiously demanded of them. It is not my duty to 
defend them, in anything they did or forbore to do ; but I do 
not believe that any person, not even the patriotic mover of 
the Resolutions in his most sanguine mood, expected that as 
a party they would, or thought that they could, " sustain and 
tender" the resolutions to their scornful opponents of the 
Cotton States. The utmost that could have been hoped for 
was that three or four senators might be found, in the mod- 
erate wing of the Republican party, who would unite with 
the conservative members from the Free States, and the 
Southern senators generally, thus forming the requisite con- 
stitutional number for such of the resolutions as required a 



APPENDIX. 63 

vote of two thirds, while the legislative measures would have 
been carried by a large majority. 

When, therefore, Messrs. Davis and Toombs said they 
would " accept " these resolutions " if tendered and sustained 
by the Republican party," and accept them as a proof that 
the hearts of their constituents were changed, they evidently 
placed their ungracious acquiescence on what they well 
knew was an impossible condition, and they announced it 
in a tone of defiance and scorn, which was enough of itself 
to extinguish all disposition to compromise. 

Finally, in order to form a correct and candid judgment 
on this whole subject, it must be borne in mind, that the 
excitement at the South on the subject of slavery, has 
always been on the part of the disunionists, in a great de- 
gree factitious, and what General Jackson thirty years ago 
pronounced a " pretext " for breaking up the Union and 
establishing a Southern Confederacy. A full demonstration 
of this proposition would exceed the limits of this note, but 
the following facts are notorious: — 

1st. The leaders of the secession movement would not 
wait for overt acts of hostility to slavery as existing in the 
States, because they knew no overt acts would be attempted. 
One of the Georgia senators said in the Senate, on the oth 
of Dec. 1860, " We do not suppose there will be any over* 
acts on the part of Mr. Lincoln. For one, 1 do not dread 
these overt acts, and I do not propose to wait for them. 
Why, sir, the power of this Federal government could be 
so exercised against the institution of slavery in the South- 
ern States, as that, without an overt act, the institution would 
not last ten years." Their pretended fear was, that, under 
the influence of the general government, a strong anti-slav- 
ery party would rapidly grow up at the South. 

2d. The two main alleged grievances of the South were, 
the non-execution of the fugitive-slave law (which was 
grossly exaggerated), and the claim on the part of the 
North, that Congress had a right to exclude slavery from 



64 APPENDIX 

the territories. Now, with respect to the first grievance, 
the clamor was far louder in the remote Cotton States, from 
which slaves very rarely escaped, than in the border States, 
in which, if anywhere, the grievance was felt. With re- 
spect to the territories, not only had the Supreme Court, in 
contravention of the whole current of legislation from the 
foundation of the government, denied the right of Congress 
to exclude slavery from the territories, not only were three 
territories admitted this very winter of 1860-61, without any 
anti-slavery restriction, but in the territory of New Mexico, 
which had been open to slaveholders ten years, and into 
which, if anywhere, slavery was to spread west war dly, only 
twenty-four slaves were found at the last census. 

3d. So far from really apprehending danger to their insti- 
tution from the attacks upon it under a Republican presi- 
dent, the Confederate agents abroad, in their official commu- 
nications with the French and English governments, have 
maintained and urged, for the sake of depriving the Govern- 
ment of the United States of the benefit of the anti-slavery 
sentiment of Europe, that the Constitution of the United 
States was rather less adverse to the reopening of the Afri- 
can slave-trade, than the Constitution of the Confederacy ; 
and that the Slave States contemplate gradual ameliorations 
of the condition of the slaves, and the abolition of slavery at 
no distant day. 

But I dismiss the painful topic. 



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